Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Jean Henry Mead, Escape

This novel might also have been called No
Escape, for it tells the story of a young woman, Andy, taken hostage
by some Hole in the Wall desperadoes on the run from the law. Her hair cut
short and disguised in men’s clothes, she is mistaken for a boy by the gang.
One of them discovers her identity, a boy named Billy, who is little older than
she. He agrees to keep her secret and does his best to protect her.

Far from home, she is trapped among her captors and put to
work as cook and domestic. Meanwhile, she develops an attachment to Billy. He’s
a neophyte in the gang, with little criminal experience, and she wants to save
him from the life of an outlaw. As the law is cracking down on rustlers and
robbers with increasing ferocity, there seems little future in frontier crime
anyway.

Characters. WhileButch Cassidy figures only briefly in the
story, Harry Longabaugh (the Sundance Kid) has a turn in a parallel plot
involving a bank robbery in Belle Fourche, South Dakota. Longabaugh is not the
congenial sort that Robert Redford made memorable in the movies. He’s a bit
cranky and impatient. When the bank robbery is a fiasco, we find him to be
little more than the above-average crook.

The Wild Bunch, Fort Worth, Texas c1900

Other characters of interest include Harve Logan, who
attends Longabaugh on the ill-fated robbery attempt. The two get captured and
jailed, then escape together, only to cross paths with two low-lifes with
nefarious plans to join the Wild Bunch. We also get to know Tom O’Day, the man
who bungles the robbery, chiefly because of a bad drinking problem.

Jim McCloud is another man bound for the Hole in the Wall when
we first meet him. Freshly escaped from prison, he’s jumping trains, shedding
his prison clothes and worried that his prison-shorn hair will give him away.
Also memorable—for his stutter—is Jim’s friend, Dick Hale.

Plot. Much of the
novel involves a winter trek across Wyoming by Billy and Andy as they deliver a
change of horses for the Belle Fourche bank robbers. Having left the horses at
an agreed place, the two then set off into bad weather on a return journey that
takes many days and finally leaves them lost, on foot, and freezing from cold.

Along the way they encounter one difficulty after another.
Meanwhile, Andy is torn by her growing affection for Billy and his resistance
to her pleas for him to leave the gang. For him, the gang is his only family,
and Butch is like a big brother to him. Failing to persuade Billy, Andy wants
only to get back home, but obstacles continue to prevent that from happening.

Jean Henry Mead

Wrapping up. Mead
has marshaled a good deal of history about members of the Hole in the Wall
gang. The book closes with an account of the fate of many of them. I’d
recommend readers to jump to that section first, because it provides an informative
context for the story she has to tell.

Historical accounts, which focus on incidents and dates,
don’t reflect the actual day-to-day experience of the men and women who lived
outside the law. Of the Hole in the Wall gang and Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch,
the novel captures the long months in hiding and the lack of diversions besides
playing cards. Food was unvaried and bad. Illness and gunshot wounds had to be
doctored with home remedies.

Traveling for days at a time across rough and hostile terrain
in the worst of weather was a tedious, often life-threatening trial. Holed up
in a cabin with the same handful of men week after week was no less wearying.
Mead’s novel removes the romance and excitement from what we imagine as the
outlaw life, and leaves us with what’s left, and it’s not exactly all thrills.
I won’t think of the Wild Bunch again without recalling Mead’s portrayal of
them.

Jean Henry Mead is a writer of historical fiction and
mysteries, as well as an award-winning photojournalist and writer of children’s
books. She is a frequent interviewer of western writers at her blog, Writers of
the West. You can find out more about her at her website.

Thanks, Ron, for the great review. Escape is my first novel (after a slew of nonficction books), and my bestselling to date. I'm currently working on No Escape: The Sweetwater Tragedy, which is based on the "Cattle Kate" hanging.